Not that there's anything wrong with that...

September 8, 2010 8:42 AM

Microsoft Corp. and Xbox Live are apologizing to a 26-year old gamer for suspending his Xbox Live account because of information in his profile. The offending text? Fort Gay, the town he lives in.

Mayor David Thompson also tried to intervene, but with little success. Thompson did not immediately return messages from The Associated Press but told television station WSAZ, which first reported the dispute, that he was informed the city's name didn't matter. The word "gay," he was told, was inappropriate in any context.*

posted by xedrik (57 comments total)

Next thing you know they'll go after this guy
posted by The Whelk at 8:45 AM on September 8, 2010

Or this one.
posted by Mister_A at 8:46 AM on September 8, 2010

inappropriate in any context

Presumably, any context other than getting sworn at by foul-mouthed 13 year olds, which is the only constant on Xbox Live. You can win or lose, play well or play poorly, but someone is going to call you a faggot, and no amount of reporting it as abuse will have any consequence.

Though I have to admit I'm amused when they call me Admiral Hardcock. Those kids!
posted by Admiral Haddock at 8:47 AM on September 8, 2010 [14 favorites]

Or Marvin Gaye.
posted by grizzled at 8:48 AM on September 8, 2010

That's just so, well, ....
posted by No Robots at 8:48 AM on September 8, 2010

"I told him, Google it - 25514!" Moore said, offering up the town's ZIP code. "He said, 'I can't help you.'"

"Bing it," dude, "Bing it." Know your audience!
posted by brandman at 8:48 AM on September 8, 2010 [44 favorites]

West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin has pledged to prevent further incidents by renaming the town "Fort Ghey".

~ or ~

Toulouse said in an interview yesterday that the reviewing employee, an avid Team Fortress fan, misread the phrase in question as '2Fort's Gay' and, in a moment of poor judgement, "told his medic to go uber."
posted by cortex at 8:49 AM on September 8, 2010 [8 favorites]

Originally chartered in 1875 as Cassville. Its name was changed to Fort Gay in 1932, at the instigation of Wardy Lovely , who was a member of the city council as well as a local educator. The story goes that he was fed up with local wags smearing mud on the initial C from city signs, changing it to "assville".

posted by smackfu at 8:50 AM on September 8, 2010 [21 favorites]

Marvin Gaye

Gaye Bykers On Acid
posted by Artw at 8:51 AM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

Or this guy! (Though he will be hard to catch...)
posted by chavenet at 8:52 AM on September 8, 2010

Wardy Lovely is my new pen name.
posted by vbfg at 8:52 AM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

I so, so needed to laugh hysterically this morning. Thanks!
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:54 AM on September 8, 2010

I thought that guy's name was Tyson Homosexual.
posted by sonascope at 8:54 AM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

The story goes that he was fed up with local wags smearing mud on the initial C from city signs, changing it to "assville".

Oh man, that is COMIC BRILLIANCE.

Mr. Pterodactyl and I don't often fight, but our last big disagreement was when McDonalds had these angus burgers. There was a sign out front saying "Hungry for angus? We've got it!" but despite my pleading he wouldn't let me steal the "g" off of the sign. Just think about how much joy I could have brought to the lives of the people driving by! He's a good husband but in this case I really think he made the wrong call.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 8:55 AM on September 8, 2010 [104 favorites]

Corporate-controlled "appropriateness" controls are going to destroy the world.
posted by DU at 8:55 AM on September 8, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm not at all surprised he got nowhere with Xbox Live support. I've had more dealings with them than I want to go into (it's an experience I'd rather forget about - those sad lost 2 months of calling and trying to work my way through the escalation matrix there, which always ends in, "My supervisor does not talk to customers."), and it always ended with me tearing my hair out. Having worked in IT for years, and specifically supporting customers for many of those, it was maddening to me how horribly their system worked (more correctly: didn't work). No IT support call should leave you feeling like you'd be better off just giving up.

Notable, indeed, that they apologized. He somehow found a human who could help. That's amazing luck. I hope he bought a lotto ticket after all this.
posted by routergirl at 8:56 AM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

"Hungry for angus? We've got it!" but despite my pleading he wouldn't let me steal the "g" off of the sign.

"Hunry for angus"? I don't get it.
posted by inigo2 at 9:03 AM on September 8, 2010 [29 favorites]

Anyone have any info on what actually happens when I report someone for dropping racial and homophobic slurs left and right? Or when they have them in their profile or gamertag and I report them? I do it pretty much every day since it's just a few clicks while I wait for the next round of MW:2 to load (and that's mostly just the profile ones or the ones who message me calling me a camper fag, since I never listen to random people on game chat).
posted by haveanicesummer at 9:07 AM on September 8, 2010

There was a sign out front saying "Hungry for angus? We've got it!" but despite my pleading he wouldn't let me steal the "g" off of the sign

I think this every time I pass a Stuart Anderson's Black Angus restaurant.

I'm a horrible horrible person.
posted by eyeballkid at 9:08 AM on September 8, 2010 [3 favorites]

Just think about how much joy I could have brought to the lives of the people driving by!

You are my hero. I wish I could grant you a 10,000 Favorite Medal with the "Childish Glee" cluster.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:12 AM on September 8, 2010 [2 favorites]

Many of the names are giggleworthy in this story.

Toulouse
Josh Moore
Wardy Lovely
Tug Fork

poor David Thompson. If only he were John Thomas.
posted by chavenet at 9:17 AM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

The moral of the story is, if you're from Fort Gay, lie and say you're really from Penis Falls.
posted by Mister_A at 9:17 AM on September 8, 2010 [4 favorites]

I think this every time I pass a Stuart Anderson's Black Angus restaurant.

There's a place in Malibu called Colony Cleaners..
posted by phaedon at 9:17 AM on September 8, 2010

Scunthorpe.
posted by Artw at 9:18 AM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

The word "gay," he was told, was inappropriate in any context.

What's the explanation for this policy? Isn't this statement itself homophobic? Is Microsoft official policy that gay gamers aren't allowed to simply use the word "gay" to find some tolerant gamers in a sea of hate speech?

It seems like Microsoft is just contributing to the totally vile nature of XBox Live.
posted by naju at 9:20 AM on September 8, 2010 [2 favorites]

I get where you're coming from, naju, but I think that most of these CSR types on the XBox Live lines have never encountered a situation, professionally, where the word "gay" was being used in any way other than as an insult. So I kind of see why there would be this line in the sand. It's misguided, but to their credit, Microsoft saw the error (at least in this particular context) and claims to be taking remedial steps.

I agree with you that it's problematic that gay gamers (presumably) can't form clans or groups or whatever with "gay" or appropriate synonyms in them, and I hope MS is addressing that as well.
posted by Mister_A at 9:26 AM on September 8, 2010

And here in Des Moines, we have Beaver Mower
posted by cottoncandybeard at 9:39 AM on September 8, 2010

What Mister_A, said. I'd bet money that 99.99% of the time when the word "gay" is used on XBox Live (or pretty much any popular multiplayer game such as Counter-Strike or World of Warcraft), it's as a slur.

For better or for worse, the CSRs at XBL know their customers.

Stephen Toulouse is an old friend, and I'm not at all surprised to see him handling the situation correctly.
posted by Ryvar at 9:43 AM on September 8, 2010

Yeah, my armchair feeling is that the Xbox Live team hasn't got the tools, team, resources or will to actually straight-up tackle the huge problem of remaking the face of Live's player culture into something less casually awful than it is.

But they recognize that they can't get away with just shrugging and saying "idiots will be idiots" either, and so they come up with something in the way of a set of guidelines and terms of use that at least nominally addresses the source of the offense. But it's necessarily a blunt toolset because you have to be able to train a big team to wield it and there's not the kind of resources dedicated to the problem to have people really do slow careful one-on-one discussions with any given 13-year-old who calls someone a fag during a match. So it becomes a first-line-of-defense thing, you say "don't say x, y, or z, because it's offensive", and subtler questions like when it's contextually problematic to say "word x is offensive" don't really get the kind of attention one might want.

See also youtube comments. When your business model involves building an army of users whose interest in your service is not in the civility of the conversation, do you alienate them by telling them they're conversing wrong? How much no-profit cash do you throw at trying to modify the ancillary behavior of your paying customers against their will? It's a big, hard problem. If you can't or won't address the fundamental behavioral problem, you revert to handling the political/perception problem by making rules about what's supposed to be okay so that you can at least tell outsiders that, hey, we tried. Or you do silly shit like this and say, hey, we tried.

Microsoft is one of the few entities on the scene that could actually just decide to throw around the crazy kind of resources doing something significant and new here would require. They'd be dumping a lot of cash on an unlikely quest with no short-term or clear-headed return on that investment, especially given that (a) it won't be quick fix and (b) there will always be new 13-year-olds to start all over with, but man if that wouldn't be a sight to see if they lost their minds and went for it anyway.
posted by cortex at 9:44 AM on September 8, 2010 [8 favorites]

What's the explanation for this policy?

I think it's a zero-tolerance policy for any term used as a slur. And when you're talking about the crowd on xBox Live and the word "gay", I suspect it's a pretty accurate policy,
posted by fatbird at 9:44 AM on September 8, 2010

What's the explanation for this policy? Isn't this statement itself homophobic? Is Microsoft official policy that gay gamers aren't allowed to simply use the word "gay" to find some tolerant gamers in a sea of hate speech?

It seems like Microsoft is just contributing to the totally vile nature of XBox Live.

In fact, gay gamers are not allowed to advertise the fact of their homosexuality in any way. Here's a lesbian who was banned, and of course this gay man was also banned. Also, here's some poor schmuck named Gaywood.

Look carefully at the reasoning and rationale behind the first two bans:

I talked to a supervisor there, Roxy, who told me that she didn't personally find the fact that my gamer tag had gay in the name offensive, but that the greater Xbox community did, so i would have to change it. I hope I'm not the only person who finds this don't ask, don't tell policy disgusting... eek

So, in short, Microsoft is, in fact, contributing to the vile nature of XBox Live. Their issue isn't even that they hate gays, but that they believe its their place to enable other peoples' hatred.
posted by Netzapper at 9:49 AM on September 8, 2010 [9 favorites]

Good thing they changed the name of the place where that man from Nantucket goes in the summer. I'm told the rumors about him are grossly exaggerated.

Blind censorship filters never work right, and they're usually pretty easily bypassed anyways.
posted by inthe80s at 9:51 AM on September 8, 2010

So, in short, Microsoft is, in fact, contributing to the vile nature of XBox Live. Their issue isn't even that they hate gays, but that they believe its their place to enable other peoples' hatred.

Pff. Gamers were like that long before X Box Live, are like that in cases where they have no contact with X Box live and should X Box Live disappear in a puff of smoke will continue to be like that long after.
posted by Artw at 9:56 AM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

...but that they believe its their place to enable other peoples' hatred.

I really don't believe this is the case at all. The word is offensive because the vast majority of uses of "gay" on XBox Live are offensive. I'm not saying a ban is the right way to handle it, but the situation is not so straightforward as your comment suggests.
posted by Mister_A at 9:59 AM on September 8, 2010

That's not a zero-tolerance policy so much as a poorly implemented subroutine surrounding a regular expression.
posted by adipocere at 9:59 AM on September 8, 2010 [6 favorites]

Wow, an apology? I'm not holding my breath for one for this incident... Of course I was about to be a non-customer, so 'why should they care?', I suppose.

Needless to say, I wasn't the least bit surprised to find that the phone agent in this case was completely unhelpful.
posted by sunshinesky at 10:01 AM on September 8, 2010

Pff. Gamers were like that long before X Box Live, are like that in cases where they have no contact with X Box live and should X Box Live disappear in a puff of smoke will continue to be like that long after.

I didn't say that that Microsoft makes gamers homophobic. I said Microsoft enables that hatred.

It's kind of equivalent to the local police helping out in a witch hunt. Yeah, okay, so the townsfolk started it, and probably would've prosecuted it regardless. But, by helping, the police put their stamp of approval on it and are also responsible for the harm caused.

Imagine the opposite policy: Microsoft keeps and reviews audio/text logs when somebody makes a verbal abuse complaint against you. When they find that you've called somebody a faggot or a nigger, they suspend your account. They could go that way, it's possible; it's even possible to do it automatically. And the result would almost certainly be a substantially more civil gaming experience--one I'd even pay for.

But they chose not to. Instead of doing their damndest to create a welcoming environment for gays and folks of color, they allow the abuse to continue because they've decided it's better for business. To give Microsoft a pass just because "gamers [are] like that" totally absolves them of the responsibility for providing a civil place to play.

I guess there's another alternative that I wouldn't mind: that Microsoft stay totally and completely out of the censoring business. Parents complain? Fuck 'em, it's the wild west. But they won't do that, because they want to pretend that it's a safe place for children to play.

But, it seems the absolute worst to ban anybody who discloses their sexual identity, and then also let 13 year olds use hate speech with impunity.
posted by Netzapper at 10:06 AM on September 8, 2010 [7 favorites]

despite my pleading he wouldn't let me steal the "g" off of the sign

I have a collection of three "L's" from an independence day sign advertising that they had flags.
posted by fusinski at 10:08 AM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

In fact, gay gamers are not allowed to advertise the fact of their homosexuality in any way. Here's a lesbian who was banned, and of course this gay man was also banned. Also, here's some poor schmuck named Gaywood.

Gay Xbox Gamers Can Now Claim Their Identities
posted by kmz at 10:10 AM on September 8, 2010

Anyone have any info on what actually happens when I report someone for dropping racial and homophobic slurs left and right? Or when they have them in their profile or gamertag and I report them?

Every single complaint that is filed is tracked, and reviewed by an actual person. Complaints for items like inappropriate gamertags and profile content are easily checked, and if found in violation of the Code of Conduct, they are forced to change their gamertag or their profile info is replaced with "Code of Conduct". Things like in-game voice are a bit harder to check, and I'm not sure how those are handled. But I can promise they don't just get ignored or drop into a black hole.

Note that there's also tracking of the accuracy of someone's complaints. Someone who abuses the system and files complaints just because someone beat them is going to end up with low accuracy, and future complaints are weighted accordingly. Similarly for people who only use them for people who have violated the CoC.

For more details, the head of Policy & Enforcement, Stephen Toulouse, does have a Twitter account (http://twitter.com/Stepto) and a blog (http://www.stepto.com/).

And note that after working with GLAAD, the team did update the policy regarding sexual orientation in Xbox Live profiles earlier this year: http://mashable.com/2010/03/05/xbox-users-sexual-orientation/
posted by evilangela at 10:11 AM on September 8, 2010 [2 favorites]

Though I have to admit I'm amused when they call me Admiral Hardcock. Those kids!

This has probably occurred to you, but perhaps when you righteously pwn one of those selfsame kids, you could immediately text-shout "U JUST GOT THE DREADED REAR ADMIRAL!!!!!!"
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:55 AM on September 8, 2010 [2 favorites]

Tee hee! Can we get some Metafilter game going on?!? I pretty much gave up on Xbox Live after the ten millionth time I was cussed out by an angry tween.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 11:03 AM on September 8, 2010

"Bing it," dude, "Bing it." Know your audience!

Do not Ping it.
posted by Artw at 11:13 AM on September 8, 2010

The other day, Digg had a front page post about how someone took an iPod nano and turned it into a wris****ch.

Man, digg is fucked.
posted by fungible at 11:19 AM on September 8, 2010

Dear god...
posted by Artw at 11:23 AM on September 8, 2010

Maybe you just test the filter with, you know, a list of known cities.
posted by swift at 11:37 AM on September 8, 2010

Note that there's also tracking of the accuracy of someone's complaints. Someone who abuses the system and files complaints just because someone beat them is going to end up with low accuracy, and future complaints are weighted accordingly. Similarly for people who only use them for people who have violated the CoC.
posted by evilangela

Guess I hope my accuracy is considered high then. A number of times I've reported people whose in-game name is displaying as something obviously offensive, but when I view their profile their gamertag is supposedly something else. So I'm unsure if the mods would just take a quick gander, decide it's not offensive, and mark me off for an incorrect reporting.
posted by haveanicesummer at 11:42 AM on September 8, 2010

LOL Digg.
posted by Mister_A at 12:47 PM on September 8, 2010

I have lots to say on this subject and I'll say it when I'm not on my phone. But right now I'm shocked and not a little dismayed by the fact that the phrase "violated the CoC" doesn't violate the CoC.
posted by doublehappy at 12:53 PM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

Respect the CoC.
posted by Artw at 12:58 PM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

Incidentally, someone reverted that "assville" explanation of the name change, although it was over a year old so it wasn't some recent vandalism. Might still be true but no cites so out it goes.
posted by smackfu at 1:07 PM on September 8, 2010

What happens if you are from Fucking or by chance, you know... really gay and proud of that fact.
posted by djduckie at 5:13 PM on September 8, 2010

There are many comments here describing getting sworn at, and then there's evilangela's description of how they investigate and slap people on the wrist. "Now don't do that again, or, well, we'll tell you again not to do that again!"

I imagine that cortex has it right, and wrong. I think wrong in that it is very easy to automate a system to regulate swearing and to do better enforcement (especially if, as evilagela says, every complaint is investigated by a live person), and right in that if they clamp down too hard on it they'll lose their customers.

A good counter-example is a young kids online site, such as Disney's Toontown. If there are any swear words or insults or any behavior remotely questionable by anyone on that site, they are immediately and permanently banned. In this case, if they didn't do this, they would lose all their customers. The paying customers are the parents, not the kids.

In the case of XBox Live the players are often the paying customers, and are often teenagers. Immediate banning would rather quickly shrink their customer base.
posted by eye of newt at 10:02 PM on September 8, 2010

Google instant blacklists Slutsky
posted by Artw at 11:08 PM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think wrong in that it is very easy to automate a system to regulate swearing and to do better enforcement

Well, it's very easy to build a system to automatically search for swearing (in writing at least; moderating voice content is a whole other ball of wax for obvious reasons), but it's not that easy to build one that does so elegantly—greedy substring swearfilters turn "classic" into "clbuttic" or "wristwatch" into "wris****ch"; dedicated curses make trivial modifications to route around filters entirely as fuck becomes fuk or phuck or fsck, gay becomes ghey, faggot becomes f a g g o t, etc.

Fundamentally the problem is with general language-use behavior, not with specific words. It's a culture thing, not a vocab thing. If you want to tackle that, you have to do more than just blacklist words. Better enforcement really is part of the challenge, and better doesn't necessarily just mean "more". The question comes down to "how do you convince a million teenagers at once to not engage in mischievous taboo violations?", and that's a question that should strike fear into the heart of anyone who has ever met or can still remember being thirteen years old with brewing sense of their own ability to do things that get a rise out of others.

So I think that, yes, there are I think things that the Live team as an example of a potentially deep-pocketed monolith in gaming could do to improve the effectiveness with which they tackle shitty language on the service. But I don't think it'd be easy. Or cheap. Or fast.
posted by cortex at 11:15 PM on September 8, 2010

"I agree with you that it's problematic that gay gamers (presumably) can't form clans or groups or whatever with 'gay' or appropriate synonyms in them, and I hope MS is addressing that as well."

I can understand anyone who doesn't want to open up this can of mine fields. Allowing positive gay references means someone(s) has to make all those judgement calls about whether a use is positive, neutral or negative. Look at the trouble that sometime arises over deletions and other mod decisions here where the process is open and personal.

Take for example a clan name like "The Gay Killers". Positive or Negative? Is it a group of gay gamers or Homophobes? Does every single person who sees the name in game going to make the same guess? And that is on a simple, unsubtle, unnuanced example. The MMO I play has a guild/clan with the innocuous name of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. Innocuous that is until you parse the initialism.
posted by Mitheral at 8:55 PM on September 9, 2010

There was a sign out front saying "Hungry for angus? We've got it!" but despite my pleading he wouldn't let me steal the "g" off of the sign.

You'll probably enjoy this.
posted by inigo2 at 9:38 PM on September 14, 2010